Movie review: Vow out: Wedding comedy ‘I Do … Until I Don’t’ is a drag

Thursday

Aug 31, 2017 at 12:18 PMAug 31, 2017 at 12:18 PM

Al Alexander More Content Now

As the writer-director-star of “In a World …,” Lake Bell delivered one of the most underrated comedies of 2013. So expectations are high for her three-hat follow-up, “I Do … Until I Don’t.” But the dreaded sophomore slump hits, and hits her hard.

Almost nothing works. The pacing is off. The jokes are flat. And the plot about three longtime couples having their love put to the test is painfully predictable, right down to the third-act marriage and birth. Per usual, Bell’s exuberant charm keeps you watching long after other stars would send you fleeing. She’s Alice, a would-be artist stuck in a rut as a co-proprietor of a struggling window blinds shop in Vero Beach, Florida, with her sweet, but clueless, husband Noah (Ed Helms). She wants to be more like her visiting sister, Fanny (Amber Heard), an artsy, hippie type confidently involved in an open relationship with her boyfriend, Xander (Wyatt Cenac).

All four, plus a bickering older couple, motorcycle enthusiast Harvey (Paul Reiser) and his fed-up wife Cybil (Mary Steenburgen), are awkwardly brought together to participate in a BBC documentary directed by marriage cynic Vivian Prudeck (Dolly Wells). She apotheosizes that marriage, like annuities, should be a seven-year contract, renewable only if both parties agree to re-up, which she contends most people won’t do.

It’s a potentially challenging idea that Bell turns to mush by coming down on the side of marriage from the onset. She tosses in some minor obstacles for each pair to overcome, but there’s never any doubt they’ll do it, robbing the piece of any real drama. Generally, the gags — lots of puns about window blinds — land with a thud. Only Reiser, with his great timing rises above it.

What “I Do …” really needs is a rewrite or two. A more efficient editor also would have been a plus on a film that too often drags. That was never a problem with Bell’s last movie. It zipped along on the strength of its ingenuity and intelligence, two things “I Do…” sorely lacks as you emphatically say I don’t.